ITIL and Benchmarking: Complimentary Disciplines

ITIL is now a 30-year-old discipline, and most IT organizations have embraced it to one degree or another.  But many organizations struggle to define and quantify the economic benefits of ITIL.  Despite billions invested in ITIL training, maturation, and implementation, clear and demonstrable performance gains – as a direct result of ITIL – remain elusive.  Nevertheless, many IT organizations forge ahead, maturing their ITIL processes with the expectation of some future payoff. While ITIL provides a common language and framework for managing IT processes, maturing ITIL processes does not, by itself, guarantee optimal IT performance.  However, when combined with benchmarking, ITIL can lead to the kind of outsized performance gains that many IT organizations have long sought after.  In fact, empirical evidence shows that the combined power of benchmarking and ITIL produces a synergy that not only accelerates the ITIL maturity curve, but also yields demonstrable, world-class performance levels in IT service and support.
Download This Article Forward To A Friend Benchmarking is a well-established tool for measuring and managing IT performance.  Effective benchmarking enables an organization to quantify its performance, compare to others in both the government and commercial sectors, identify performance gaps, and define the actions necessary to close the gaps. The power of benchmarking is that it enables an organization to save enormous amounts of time and energy by building upon the know-how of the industry’s world-class performers.  IT organizations that focus exclusively on maturing their ITIL processes tend to make progress incrementally, at an evolutionary pace, through trial-and-error.  But benchmarking forces an organization to look externally – at the best-in-class.  By studying the best-in-class, and selectively adopting practices from the best-of-the-best, IT organizations that utilize benchmarking are able to improve their performance at a revolutionary pace. The data below illustrates the combined power of benchmarking and ITIL.  Based upon more than 200 benchmarks conducted by MetricNet, it is evident that regardless of the level of ITIL maturity, overall performance is significantly higher among those who practice benchmarking.  Likewise, the majority of top quartile performers have two things in common: 1) they benchmark their performance annually, and 2) they have matured their ITIL processes. ITIL and Benchmarking Complimentary Disciplines graph The simple fact is this.  Benchmarking can accelerate the maturing of key ITIL processes.  Moreover, benchmarking is the quickest, most effective path to world-class performance for IT organizations that are serious about optimizing their performance.